Caledoniyya

It seems I missed this one, although it nevertheless just choked me on my muesli:

Books@Cafe and many other establishments have been closed this week. Here is what I witnessed and what happened to us at Books@Cafe:

The night before Ramadan, the police violently stormed into the café and asked us to close down. “This is the holy month of Ramadan!” they barked. Since we are officially licensed and they could provide no official papers, we refused to close.

[...] They then walked into the kitchen while many of us including my brother were standing and witnessing. One person proceeds to tell our chef that there are cockroaches, insects, mice in the kitchen. Every one was baffled and were telling him to show us what he was talking about! Of course there was nothing, but with every accusation, he ordered one of his committee members to write it down and then adds, “let them get what they deserve for serving alcohol in this holy month.”

Sunday night, we get shocked with the visit from the police with an order to close. There was no reason within the order. Of course, they only come at night so that there is no one to call or anything to do. When we showed them our papers, they kept calling us a night club. We are licensed as a restaurant. To them, if alcohol is served, then it is a night club. This is the logic we encountered, regardless of the fully accredited and legal license.

For now Books@Cafe is closed. We are trying to get the license to reopen and have to send a “ister7am” as in begging for mercy for something we were legally doing and licensed by our ministry to do. To date the Ministry of Tourism and the Hotel and Restaurant Association have done nothing. The star rating system they have created has no value or protection.

The full article can be found here, while a bundle of mystifying responses can be found on Angry Arab, under Tuesday.